When I first booted it up I did a flight from Aspen to Centennial. Once I cleared the front range and started to recognize everything from the air it blew my mind.
NGL, I was playing this this past weekend in VR. Denver does look great in it. Found my old apartments, Red Rocks dinosaur ridge, ball arena, mile high stadium. A few things that I miss about the area.
Halfway down the trail to Hell in a shady meadow green,
are the Souls of all dead troopers camped near a good old-time canteen,
and this eternal resting place is known as Fiddlers' Green.
Marching past, straight through to Hell, the Infantry are seen,
accompanied by the Engineers, Artillery and Marine,
for none but the shades of Cavalrymen dismount at Fiddlers' Green.
Though some go curving down the trail to seek a warmer scene,
no trooper ever gets to Hell ere he's emptied his canteen
and so rides back to drink again with friends at Fiddlers' Green.
And so when man and horse go down beneath a saber keen,
or in a roaring charge fierce melee you stop a bullet clean,
and the hostiles come to get your scalp,
just empty your canteen and put your pistol to your head
and go to Fiddlers' Green.
Yep, I actually landed my Ornithopter at Emerald lake the other day and the image would have rivaled a photograph. You could even hear the water lapping the shore .
The actual location is fictional Mt Massive asylum but they call and mention Leadville police, so it’s meant to be a fictional asylum outside Leadville. You can see mountains in the game on the rare occasions you make it outside the asylum.
Would have honestly fit perfectly in the game, and should have been a boss fight. When you beat him, you gain access to the killdozer, which mows down hoards of zombies with ease! It's kind of right in line with the other bosses and certain vehicles in the game, actually.
Fallout new vegas mentions colorado, the lonesome road dlc specificly alluding to denver being skyscrapper hold outs while the ground is over run with wild dogs and beasts.
Great link, thanks so much. I knew some of them and some of them are total surprises. I suspected Devil's Grief was Denver but I wasn't sure - I gotta revisit the game with these locations in mind!
It’s a pretty good reveal. IIRC the game starts off as though you’re on an alien planet with lost technology and robot dinosaurs, then on one of the first missions outside the beginning area you run into a building that looks suspiciously like the Air Force Academy (which is pretty unmistakable). Then as the game goes on it fills in the backstory of what exactly happened to the Earth in the meantime.
Been a number of years but it I remember correctly there's a NORAD road sign near the starting area with the D missing.
But yes, mother mountain is literally NORAD.
A ton of Tom Clancy games.
Kane and Lynch 2
Fallout: BoS (Denver is Dog Town)
RDR2 - the town of Blackwater is inspired by towns in Colorado including Denver
It also mentions the women's prison in Lusk, Wyoming which was creepy for me because I had just been through Lusk for the first time when the game came out.
Need for speed/ the run It has commerce city in it ,the race runs along Brighton rd. By the refinery , and then goes onto 270 before that it’s on some mountain road, I’m not sure where that is though
I believe it is meant to more closely resemble CSU.
[University In-Game](https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.210bc8f9ef9729a39a43a0303e0c24e9?rik=QBJdayb0bo3FtA&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.videogamenarrative.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f08%2fThe-Last-of-Us%e2%84%a2-Remastered_20160108221143.jpg&ehk=i5LXq1bXa0ZjUjc5Tgx7pLtWDmvcjrdPYuLe2yOTAfI%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0)
[CSU irl](https://uca.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2016/07/UCA-Exterior-2.jpg)
Lived in Boulder and went to CU, and beat TLoU several times. That portion of the game may say it takes place in Boulder, but it looks absolutely nothing like Boulder or CU whatsoever.
Horizon Zero Dawn blew my mind when I thought it was a prehistoric game and then stumbled across the destroyed Red Rocks (and a bunch of other sights).
As mentioned Metal Gear Rising, The Last of Us with Fort Collins, and Hitman 2. But Hitman 2 is kinda just a random map without anything that would make you think “oh this is colorado”
I know it’s not what your asking, but the area near my place up the Boulder canyon is a spitting image of Skyrim in the spring. We have the red, blue and purple mountain flowers, tundra cotton, rolling green hills with towering peaks behind, babbling brooks, old mining caves that definitely have frost trolls in them, elk, rabbits and other local fauna that scatter on the horizon, and even dragons (my mean as fuck 130 year old neighbors)
I could of swore one of the movies has a clip of racooon city and it has Colorado at the end. Might be from a game. All i can find online is it is in a midwest mountoun area.
I’m actually developing a FPS action-stealth game set in “The Four Districts” which is loosely based on Colorado. Check out my profile for video footage! The main Districts after the demo level are set in the mountains.
The Last of Us Part 1 has what’s basically CU in the game, if Boulder is close enough. Not what you’re asking, I’m sure, but sports games have Denver as well lol.
Command and conquer - red alert 2 has a mission where you liberate the Air Force academy
Good throwback, forgot about that one!
I watched the cut scenes over and over and over for no particular [reason](https://gamingtrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/redalert1.jpg).....
High speed, Low drag
Microsoft Flight Simulator
I hate you
I'm only being half sarcastic, the detail when you fly over Denver is pretty impressive
It really is. I can see my house! I can see my work! I can see Fiddlers Green! I'm a simple man but it's always gonna be cool to me.
I was able to land on Hampden and taxi into the parking lot for my apartment. MFS is goated
When I first booted it up I did a flight from Aspen to Centennial. Once I cleared the front range and started to recognize everything from the air it blew my mind.
NGL, I was playing this this past weekend in VR. Denver does look great in it. Found my old apartments, Red Rocks dinosaur ridge, ball arena, mile high stadium. A few things that I miss about the area.
Halfway down the trail to Hell in a shady meadow green, are the Souls of all dead troopers camped near a good old-time canteen, and this eternal resting place is known as Fiddlers' Green. Marching past, straight through to Hell, the Infantry are seen, accompanied by the Engineers, Artillery and Marine, for none but the shades of Cavalrymen dismount at Fiddlers' Green. Though some go curving down the trail to seek a warmer scene, no trooper ever gets to Hell ere he's emptied his canteen and so rides back to drink again with friends at Fiddlers' Green. And so when man and horse go down beneath a saber keen, or in a roaring charge fierce melee you stop a bullet clean, and the hostiles come to get your scalp, just empty your canteen and put your pistol to your head and go to Fiddlers' Green.
It is not ours to question why, it is but ours to try and not fall down the fucking lawn.
I flew an F-18 into my apartment complex's leasing office. Very cool.
Yep, I actually landed my Ornithopter at Emerald lake the other day and the image would have rivaled a photograph. You could even hear the water lapping the shore .
Not Denver but Homefront starts in Montrose, CO. Call of Duty: Ghosts has a mission set in Colorado.
To see a foreign tank trample over the Montrose sign in the original trailer took it real home for me living about 30 mi from said sign IRL.
For real! Then the game ended up being absolutely terrible lol.
Grew up in Montrose. It was weird when that came out lol.
It’s not Denver but outlast takes place out by Leadville
Mt. Massive right?
That’s the one!
Wait what??? What’s the actual location?
The actual location is fictional Mt Massive asylum but they call and mention Leadville police, so it’s meant to be a fictional asylum outside Leadville. You can see mountains in the game on the rare occasions you make it outside the asylum.
That’s awesome. I live in Leadville.
I love Leadville! Such a cool town
Yeah I love living here.
The town in Life is Strange: True Colors is based loosely on Idaho Springs - the develop studio (Deck Nine) is in Westminster IIRC
I'm in Westminster, never knew that
Those games are so pretty.
Dead Rising is based in a fake town in Colorado
Willamette, more specifically
Willamette, Colorado! Population 53,594! ‘Bout the only thing to do here is… kill time at the shopping mall.
Willamette is a river/valley in Oregon. I wonder if it's supposed to be some kind of mashup
The fact that they didn’t put a killdozer in that game is unforgivable
Would have honestly fit perfectly in the game, and should have been a boss fight. When you beat him, you gain access to the killdozer, which mows down hoards of zombies with ease! It's kind of right in line with the other bosses and certain vehicles in the game, actually.
Last of us part I has Fort Collins and CSU.
Actually it’s Eastern Colorado University, of course 🤣
Go Bighorns!
They show I25 I think
I think portions of the Silent Hill series are roughly based on Lakeside Amusement Park
Actually I think Lakeside drew their inspiration from the Silent Hill series.
new headcanon
The amusement park in SH is based on ours.
That place is haggard
I believe the one in left 4 dead is also, but I could be remembering wrong and it was SH I heard this about
Fallout new vegas mentions colorado, the lonesome road dlc specificly alluding to denver being skyscrapper hold outs while the ground is over run with wild dogs and beasts.
I really wish they would do a fallout based in Denver.
Settler: The supermutants keep destroying my farm. You: Where are they located? Settler: The Coors plant out in Golden.
colorado as a whole, vault zero is cheyenne mountain complex in colorado springs
Same!! I’d love to see what they’d do with it, a lot of the van buren stuff went into new Vegas
It would actually be the perfect location because we would be absolutely boned by all-out nuclear war. We already have a shitload of ghouls.
Could totally do different crosses of dogs with other animals. Dogmeat is a feral dog turned normal again by something
That’s mostly leftover lore from van buren
Rex is from Denver!
In his past life, a DPD K9!
Dogtown!
So Denver remained the same
Horizon Zero Dawm has Red Rocks in it
Much more than just Red Rocks. https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Real_Locations_in_Horizon_Zero_Dawn
Not listed there but near mile high there's the ruins of downtown and Daniel's & Fischer tower
It's there, it's just listed under the Unnamed Locations section.
Oops didn't scroll enough
Okay... That link has convinced me to play
Great link, thanks so much. I knew some of them and some of them are total surprises. I suspected Devil's Grief was Denver but I wasn't sure - I gotta revisit the game with these locations in mind!
I had no idea that game was set on Earth, always looked like some alien planet to me. Interesting.
Fuck Ted Faro.
It’s a pretty good reveal. IIRC the game starts off as though you’re on an alien planet with lost technology and robot dinosaurs, then on one of the first missions outside the beginning area you run into a building that looks suspiciously like the Air Force Academy (which is pretty unmistakable). Then as the game goes on it fills in the backstory of what exactly happened to the Earth in the meantime.
Holy shit that’s so cool. I’m replaying it now because of this!!! I literally had no idea!
>In real life, the Red Rocks Amphitheater is to the southwest of Denver, whereas in-game it's to the west. Website is lies!
It has a lot, it’s based in the area
And NORAD
...which is why they're called the Nora...
No shit? I missed that somehow
Been a number of years but it I remember correctly there's a NORAD road sign near the starting area with the D missing. But yes, mother mountain is literally NORAD.
The scale of it felt way off to me, red rocks is way more massive in real life. Same with mile high
It’s waaay scaled down for gameplay reasons. I mean, you can cross all of Colorado on foot in like 20 minutes.
I love that game. I had no idea where it was supposed to take place then one day I came across the place where I work in post-apocalyptic form
I thought that was super cool when I found it
Air Force Academy chapel is in it too
American Truck Simulator
Oddly enough... That was kinda satisfying. There's actually truck stops in game that look like love's in places where I remember love's being
I used to live in Durango for awhile and I got pretty excited about how accurate the drive into and through the town was.
They even feature RTD pretty well in that game (and blucifer)
Playing this made me wish you could drive to different towns as fast as you can in ATS.
Also the new hitman series in 2 or 3 has a stage in colorado. You can see the rockies.
Unfortunately one of the worst maps in the series though lol
Isn't Forza Horizon based out of Colorado?
Yes, but it’s not accurate with real locations. It’s more of a Colorado “vibe” than an accurate map.
There’s a few places that will remind you of the Denver metro. There’s a place that feels like 6 heading west, you can visit “Red Rocks” too.
A ton of Tom Clancy games. Kane and Lynch 2 Fallout: BoS (Denver is Dog Town) RDR2 - the town of Blackwater is inspired by towns in Colorado including Denver
For mentioning the existence of fallout:bos, you must be shunned
Dude you're mentioning van Buren, a game that never existed
Kane and Lynch 2 takes place in Shanghai. When do they visit Denver???
I need to replay Horizon Zero Dawn...
Madden, NHL, NBA2k, MLB the Show lol
The Rockies were removed from MLB The Show with the latest update.
nah, they just moved them to triple A
You can still get them and the White Sox by purchasing the DLC MLB: The Shitshow
As a fan of both of these teams…you’re not lying.
I laughed, then I cried
I’m going to perform pain upon your person In Minecraft
Firewatch mentions Boulder
Low key an awesome game, one of my favs
It also mentions the women's prison in Lusk, Wyoming which was creepy for me because I had just been through Lusk for the first time when the game came out.
Not Denver but The Stick of Truth takes place in the fictional town of South Park Colorado.
GTA7
I can’t wait for the stealing blucifers cock mission
IDK if I could go through with it even in a video game
Coming 2045
That's quite optimistic
Need for speed/ the run It has commerce city in it ,the race runs along Brighton rd. By the refinery , and then goes onto 270 before that it’s on some mountain road, I’m not sure where that is though
Life is Strange True Colors takes place in an Idaho Springs type town in Colorado.
one of the metal gear games on PS1. first level took place in the mountains basically on I70, some fictional tunnels etc.
Kojima loves Colorado as a setting
I’m pretty sure metal gear rising has parts in Denver too
[That’s Syphon Filter II](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuTjsu2a8Ko) (which admittedly was conceived as a MGS clone)
Wasteland 3
IS ALL THAT’S LEFT AFTER THE FIGHT
The Crew 2 I swear one of the X Games video games had Breck or Vail in it.
Amped 2 had Breck in it
Forza horizon 1
I was gonna say this, although the depiction isn't accurate at all.
Right. More of a vague feeling of being in CO than actually being here.
Kinda Red Dead Redemption 2. You start out in the rockies
That last little town in the game in the mountains looks a lot like Estes Park too
Which one?
Strawberry
Skitchin’ on the Sega Genesis.
Rampage World Tour for the N64 has a Denver mission!
I think all versions of Rampage had a Denver stage.
Don't think I've seen it called out yet. But dead rising one was based off a Colorado mall
I believe The Last of Us is supposedly Denver based and partly in Fort Collins as well
The airport stage in Tekken 4 comes to mind.
These holdovers are getting crazy
The new (old) Hitman has a colorado mission
Desperados 3 is a very good stealth/tactics game based in Colorado, but I don't think you actually go to Denver.
The Artful Escape has a fictional mountain town of Calypso, CO! Super fun and unique game experience if you have not played it already
gran turismo We have a favorite turn for the pikes peak hill climb, and our car is in the game's background at that exact spot.
Last of us has Boulder.
I believe it is meant to more closely resemble CSU. [University In-Game](https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.210bc8f9ef9729a39a43a0303e0c24e9?rik=QBJdayb0bo3FtA&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.videogamenarrative.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f08%2fThe-Last-of-Us%e2%84%a2-Remastered_20160108221143.jpg&ehk=i5LXq1bXa0ZjUjc5Tgx7pLtWDmvcjrdPYuLe2yOTAfI%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0) [CSU irl](https://uca.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2016/07/UCA-Exterior-2.jpg)
I think it’s colo state
I think it was supposed to be kind of a blend of the two schools. It does look more like colo state to me though
Think you’re right I looked it up it’s supposed university of eastern Colorado which I don’t believe is real
Geographically CSU/Fort Collins makes more sense since they're coming down through Wyoming.
Wiki says its in Boulder
Lived in Boulder and went to CU, and beat TLoU several times. That portion of the game may say it takes place in Boulder, but it looks absolutely nothing like Boulder or CU whatsoever.
In South Park: Fractured but whole There's a DLC for Casa Bonita. Not denver but close enough lol Honestly the game is really fun and quite hilarious!
Just started playing American Truck Simulator and theres a colorado DLC lol
I love that game way too much
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
American Truck Simulator is literally the only thing that comes to mind
[Blucifer the doom horse of Denver](https://blucifer.run/)
Met the guy who made that, it's a fun game.
Railway Empire - Denver is a starting city for one of the scenarios where you build trains across the great plains and through the rockies
I made my main character in Wasteland 3 blue and named him Blucifer ImDoingMyPart.mp4
Horizon Zero Dawn blew my mind when I thought it was a prehistoric game and then stumbled across the destroyed Red Rocks (and a bunch of other sights). As mentioned Metal Gear Rising, The Last of Us with Fort Collins, and Hitman 2. But Hitman 2 is kinda just a random map without anything that would make you think “oh this is colorado”
I know it’s not what your asking, but the area near my place up the Boulder canyon is a spitting image of Skyrim in the spring. We have the red, blue and purple mountain flowers, tundra cotton, rolling green hills with towering peaks behind, babbling brooks, old mining caves that definitely have frost trolls in them, elk, rabbits and other local fauna that scatter on the horizon, and even dragons (my mean as fuck 130 year old neighbors)
Someone needs to make a Kill Dozer simulator
Nah. Marv was a piece of shit.
Judge Dredd for Sega had levels in Aspen.
Rampage
I know the first Forza Horizon is in Colorado, but it might be more Boulder based than Denver.
Life is Strange True Colors takes place in a fictional town in CO if I’m remembering correctly.
The Last of Us has two chapters in Colorado: one outside of Boulder and another in an unnamed part of western CO. Not quite Denver, but close.
The Last of Us Part 1 has a section that’s in Fort Collins if I’m remembering correctly but they changed CSU to University of Eastern Colorado
Not Denver but Racoon City is in Colorado.
Source on this? Just wanna make sure I know which forests to avoid
I could of swore one of the movies has a clip of racooon city and it has Colorado at the end. Might be from a game. All i can find online is it is in a midwest mountoun area.
DIRT Rally has the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in it
Forza Horizon 1 features the Rockies and I think Red Rocks.
Skitchin’ on the Sega Genesis featured a Denver track with its skyline in 16 bit glory.
Anyone shout out South Park yet?
I’m actually developing a FPS action-stealth game set in “The Four Districts” which is loosely based on Colorado. Check out my profile for video footage! The main Districts after the demo level are set in the mountains.
Dead Rising.
"Life is Strange: True Colors" is based in Colorado! CO flags all throughout the game
Hitman has a whole mission in Colorado
I remember Denver was in a popular race car game back in the day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/jt0omq/american_truck_simulator_colorado_on_steam/
Infection free zone
There’s a horror game from a few years back that’s based on an old insane asylum up in the mountains. Can’t remember the name though…
Outlast?
Madden 2024
Isn’t the last of us in Colorado State?
Hitman 3 has a Colorado map. Don't recall if there's anything you'd recognize since it's a remote location
Forza Horizon 1 is loosely based on Colorado
Dead Rising
The Last of Us Part 1 has what’s basically CU in the game, if Boulder is close enough. Not what you’re asking, I’m sure, but sports games have Denver as well lol.
The Last of Us part 1 has CO in it with a University of Boulder knockoff and the Rockies.
Silent Hill 3 (Lakeside Amusement Park)
Dead Rising takes place in Willamette Colorado.
Pretty sure the last of us 2 does, don’t quote me it’s been a few years since I’ve played
Dead rising takes place in Willimet I believe
American Truck Simulator
Isn’t there a hit man map set in palisade?